1440p/4K gaming

[Panagiotis Kara]

Hello guys,

 

I just bought a new gpu, the MSI gtx1080 Gaming X. I also own a 55" 4K TV the Samsung JU7500. 

 

My cpu though isn't that strong, I have the AMD fx 8320 overclocked to 4000mhz. I will upgrade it in the future but until then I will be using this one. 

 

I want your advices for 1440p and 4K gaming. Basically, I want what works best for the best possible combination of high gaming settings and 60fps. 

 

What is weird is that when I choose 1440p on Nvidia's display settings, it's limited to 30hz refresh rate. There is no option for 60hz. 

 

Any advices about how to adjust nvidia's settings, my tv and gaming settings in order to be able to play in 1440p or 4k with the best possible game settings and stable 50-60 fps? 

 

[LHJKO]

What cable are you using?

[Panagiotis Kara]

3 minutes ago, Vernw3 said:

What cable are you using?

That's maybe a problem. I use a 10 meters hdmi cause the tv is in the livingroom far away from the desktop. I think its hdmi 2 though. 

[PETRGangKing]

The cable length wouldn't be an issue. Are there any settings in your tv to allow "UHD Deep Color", I think thats how Samsung words it. Idk about 1440p but I know in 4k my tv was limited to 30hz until I enabled UHD Deep Color on the input I was using. 

[FloRolf]

4k obviously because 1440p doesn't scale with the pixels Correctly on a 4k monitor.

(example, 1080p would use 4 Pixels of your 4k screen to display 1 pixels while 1440p needs 2.24 pixels, which is not possible) 

Just lower the settings depending on the game. My 1080 works fine on 4k though. 

[Panagiotis Kara]

2 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

4k obviously because 1440p doesn't scale with the pixels Correctly on a 4k monitor.

Just lower the settings depending on the game. My 1080 works fine on 4k though. 

Unfortunately scaling is good in both 4k and 1440p. The refresh rate is not the same. I tried Wildlands with high settings but with MSSA and all of those antialiasing stuff off but 8 get no more than 40-45 fps. I also tried 1080p but this time with antialiasing on and it was around 35fps. Is that normal? 

[Panagiotis Kara]

11 minutes ago, PETRGangKing said:

The cable length wouldn't be an issue. Are there any settings in your tv to allow "UHD Deep Color", I think thats how Samsung words it. Idk about 1440p but I know in 4k my tv was limited to 30hz until I enabled UHD Deep Color on the input I was using. 

I dont know if there is an UHD Deep Color option..I just know that my tv gives 60fps in 4k if turned in game mode. I will search for this option. However as I mentioned when I choose 4k display option on pc under Nvidia display settings it looks like working. The thing is that I cant get 60fps in 4k with high settings even with antialiasing options off. That's why I wanted to try 1440p but in this case there is no option for 60hz refresh rate neither on game settings and the nvidia display settings. 

[PETRGangKing]

So it is only in 30hz in 1440p? 4k games are quite taxing, I would imagine the cpu is a bottleneck but even with a good cpu not all games will hit 60 fps in high , even with a 1080. I would try medium settings maybe. If you ever spring for a 4k monitor, I def reccomend one with G-sync. It helps to make lower framerates look much smoother.

[Panagiotis Kara]

Yeap there is only 

7 minutes ago, PETRGangKing said:

So it is only in 30hz in 1440p? 4k games are quite taxing, I would imagine the cpu is a bottleneck but even with a good cpu not all games will hit 60 fps in high , even with a 1080. I would try medium settings maybe. If you ever spring for a 4k monitor, I def reccomend one with G-sync. It helps to make lower framerates look much smoother.

Yeah there is only 30fps in 1440 and thats really weird i dont know why. The cpu is definitely a bottleneck but with lower settings I think I should get 50 fps at least. 

[PETRGangKing]

If I'm not mistaken, the 8320 utilizes PCI-E x16 2.0, while the gtx 1080 was designed with PCI-E x16 3.0 in mind. 2.0 has half the bandwidth of 3.0.

[Panagiotis Kara]

3 minutes ago, PETRGangKing said:

If I'm not mistaken, the 8320 utilizes PCI-E x16 2.0, while the gtx 1080 was designed with PCI-E x16 3.0 in mind. 2.0 has half the bandwidth of 3.0.

I dont know it but why 4k gives the option lf 60fps and 1440 no? 4k should be more demanding

[PETRGangKing]

I'm sorry, I have no idea why it is limited to 30hz in 1440p but not in 4k, I would imagine it has something to do with the TV, I never tried gaming 1440p on a TV so I couldn't give any insight into that problem. 4k is definitely more demanding, if you could get that display to work in 30hz, you would definitely get higher framerates in 1440p than you would in 4k, given there are no other variables coming into play.

[ApolloX75]

5 hours ago, Panagiotis Kara said:

Unfortunately scaling is good in both 4k and 1440p. The refresh rate is not the same. I tried Wildlands with high settings but with MSSA and all of those antialiasing stuff off but 8 get no more than 40-45 fps. I also tried 1080p but this time with antialiasing on and it was around 35fps. Is that normal? 

The 35 fps at 1080 sounds right since at that resolution your 8320 would become a massive bottleneck. Wildlands is heavily CPU dependent.

[Panagiotis Kara]

1 hour ago, ApolloX75 said:

The 35 fps at 1080 sounds right since at that resolution your 8320 would become a massive bottleneck. Wildlands is heavily CPU dependent.

So you think it's just because of the cpu? With a ryzen I would be able to play 4K at 60fps and ultra game settings (with antifiltering off) ? And what about GTA V or Rise Of The Tomb Raider and Witcher 3 ? are those games CPU-demand as well?

[ApolloX75]

18 minutes ago, Panagiotis Kara said:

So you think it's just because of the cpu? With a ryzen I would be able to play 4K at 60fps and ultra game settings (with antifiltering off) ? And what about GTA V or Rise Of The Tomb Raider and Witcher 3 ? are those games CPU-demand as well?

Those are all games with a lot of CPU demand, yes. However keep in mind the higher the resolution the more load is put on the GPU. 

So for sake of argument, my 4790k at 4.8ghz with my 1080 runs Wildlands in the mid 40s at 4k with everything on. At 1080p I can easily push high 90s on average.

[Panagiotis Kara]

14 minutes ago, ApolloX75 said:

Those are all games with a lot of CPU demand, yes. However keep in mind the higher the resolution the more load is put on the GPU. 

So for sake of argument, my 4790k at 4.8ghz with my 1080 runs Wildlands in the mid 40s at 4k with everything on. At 1080p I can easily push high 90s on average.

Sounds fair for 4k but with 1080p you should go around 120fps or not? Have you tried 1440p on 4k monitor? is that possible? And also, what you use to play? 4k mid settings at 40fps or you go with 1080p and high settings for higher fps ? 

[ApolloX75]

1 minute ago, Panagiotis Kara said:

Sounds fair for 4k but with 1080p you should go around 120fps or not? Have you tried 1440p on 4k monitor? is that possible? And also, what you use to play? 4k mid settings at 40fps or you go with 1080p and high settings for higher fps ? 

Honestly it's been so long since I ran at 1080p I could be completely wrong on the framerate, it could be much higher. I will check this afternoon.

As for settings I Max everything out as high as I can at both 1080 and 4k. I haven't tried 1440 but I will this afternoon to give you some results.

[Panagiotis Kara]

5 minutes ago, ApolloX75 said:

Honestly it's been so long since I ran at 1080p I could be completely wrong on the framerate, it could be much higher. I will check this afternoon.

As for settings I Max everything out as high as I can at both 1080 and 4k. I haven't tried 1440 but I will this afternoon to give you some results.

Nice, thank you! But generally what do you think is better? 1080p in ultra high or 4k in mid settings for example? 

[ApolloX75]

1 hour ago, Panagiotis Kara said:

Nice, thank you! But generally what do you think is better? 1080p in ultra high or 4k in mid settings for example? 

It's a tough sell and I find everyone's eyes work differently. 

For myself; I like the crisp picture and detail of 4k over 1080p, even at medium settings. For someone like my wife however, she wouldn't know the difference between 1080p and 1024x768. She just cares that it works.

 

In the end it is entirely subjective but I really think it comes down to what you're playing. FPS? 1080p is perfect. RTS or RPG? 4k really nails down the immersion and screen space.

[ApolloX75]

5 hours ago, Panagiotis Kara said:

Nice, thank you! But generally what do you think is better? 1080p in ultra high or 4k in mid settings for example? 

So I ran some tests and the results were not what I expected (or remember oddly enough). This was done using Wildlands for reference. I can do some other titles as well if you want. I'm going to do some more batch runs with different settings tuned to see what it takes to get 60 FPS stable at 4K and I'll report back with those later.

 

1080p - Ultra w/ Temporal AA, 2x AF

72-75 Avg FPS, 59-80% CPU load (across all 8 threads), 98-99% GPU Usage, 64% Vid Mem Usage

1440p - Ultra w/ Temporal AA, 2x AF

53-57 Avg FPS, 44-73% CPU Load (across all 8 threads), 99% GPU Usage, 67% Vid Mem Usage

4K - Ultra w/ Temporal AA, 2x AF

35-40 Avg FPS, 39-73% CPU Load (across all 8 threads), 99% GPU Usage, 79% Vid Mem Usage

 

I honestly thought my 1080p framerate was a lot higher than that, so something may be going on there. Could also just be some settings I have on now that I didn't before, very possible. Reducing AA and AF really had no impact on the total framerate in general, but certainly did change the overall look of the game. I did record these results in a heavy firefight with Unidad, during daylight hours, surrounded by trees and a ton of shadows were rendered so that likely had an impact as well.

 

Also worth noting my 1080 is a lazy lump, it does not like to turbo past 2000MHz on a good day.

[ApolloX75]

Alright so done some more testing.

 

Sniper Elite 4 - Preset to Ultra, 16x AA, DX12 & Async Compute enabled

1080p - 144-153 FPS, 16-23% CPU load, 99% GPU load, 58% Framebuffer

1440p - 94-106 FPS, 17-21% CPU load, 99% GPU load, 59% Framebuffer

4K       -  50-62 FPS, 12-19% CPU load, 99% GPU Load, 51% Framebuffer

 

The Witcher 3 - Ultra Preset, Hairworks x4, Uncapped Framerate

1080p - 83-103 FPS, 52-60% CPU load, 99% GPU load, 26% Framebuffer

1440p - 60-70 FPS, 50-59% CPU load, 99% GPU load, 30% Framebuffer

4K       - 39-54 FPS, 20-27% CPU load, 99% GPU load, 39% Framebuffer

 

Fallout 4 - Ultra Preset, 8x AF, TAA, 

1080p - 99-123 FPS, 48-49% CPU load, 91-98% GPU load, 40% Framebuffer

1440p - 89-95 FPS, 49-53% CPU load, 94-99% GPU load, 43% Framebuffer

4K       - 47-54 FPS, 24-35% CPU load, 99% GPU load, 52% Framebuffer

 

Hopefully that gives you some good frame of reference. I can't do GTA V unfortunately, as I do not own it. 

[PETRGangKing]

4k wise, That doesn't look too far from what I would expect out of a 1080, your Witcher framerates are almost exactly what I got when I had a 1080 paired with a 6700k.

[Panagiotis Kara]

@PETRGangKing I found this setting you mentioned for the UHD Color on my 4k TV. When I turn it on there is no signal because of the cable probably. However if I go for a 10meter 60hz hdmi cable it will be too expensive. I found something like a repeater which turns the HDMI Cable to 4K/60hz signal 4:4:4. Check out the pic below. Do you know if such a thing would work? 

[Panagiotis Kara]

@ApolloX75 unfortunately I have really bad results fps-wise even in 1080p with MSAA and antifiltering off. With such settings I am around 30-35 fps average. That's probably because of my cpu which I knew that would bottleneck my GPU but i didn't expect it that bad in 1080. I have the 8320 fx overclocked to 4.000 and I try to find a combination with the best possible graphics from one side and 50-60 fps on the other side until I upgrade my CPU, MOBO and RAM. 

[PETRGangKing]

CPU will bottle neck you more in 1080p than it would in higher resolutions. As you get higher in resolution, your GPU handles more of the load.